


Keeps Following Me

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Miracle (2004)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-22
Updated: 2004-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:05:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1635530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life was easier now, man. Rizzo just wasn't sure he wanted it that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeps Following Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for vissy

 

 

"Three Dog Night, OC."

"I don't care. Grab your gear and let's go." Jack stretched out a leg from where he was sprawled on the carpet and nudged the back of Rizzo's head with his foot. Rizzo's vision blurred for a moment as his head jerked forward. Jack nudged again.

"Three Dog Night, man. What do I do with them? 'Cause, see, _three_. It starts with a _T_ , but it's also a number." Rizzo reached behind his shoulder and, without turning around, smacked Jack hard on the ankle with the album sleeve of Suitable for Framing. "Go where?"

"Put it in the _T_ s. Anywhere with a rink that's open. We'll go break into the arena at school, play a game. See how long it takes the cops to realize we're there."

"It's... you really want to hear what Herb'll say if we get arrested?" Rizzo scratched under the neck of his t-shirt and frowned at the piles of glossy records on the floor around him. His apartment looked absolutely wrecked. "Do you see the _C_ s anywhere?

"So we'll go somewhere else. We'll go play football in the street." Jack scooted up to a sitting position and craned his head to peer over Rizzo's shoulder, coming close enough that Rizzo could feel the fine hairs on the back of his neck move when Jack spoke. "You don't want the _C_ s for that. The Carpenters belongs over there with Iron Butterfly and the other _I_ s -- since it's actual title is I'm So Fucking Embarrassed You Own That, Rizzo, Get Rid of It or I Tell Howard Cosell About That Little Pre-Game Ritual You Used to Have."

Judging by the grunt he let out, it'd been a while since Jack took an elbow to the chest without a couple of layers of padding. He flopped back onto the floor, red-faced.

Rizzo smirked and raised an eyebrow in Jack's direction. Through the open window, he could hear Barry and Lynn from 14F trying to fish their frisbee out of the storm drain. There was a full length meatball sub in the fridge and he had nothing to do for the rest of the day but watch OC fidget restlessly on his floor, t-shirt twisting tightly around his middle -- no games, no practice, no worrying about if his legs were feeding the damn wolves or not, thank god.

Life was easier with a gold medal, man.

School was easier. Charming his way out of a ticket when he left his Pontiac triple-parked outside Solomon's was easier. Finding cheap sweat socks with strong elastic was easier. Women were easier.

Women were _way_ easier. Even the unattainable ones, the chicks he'd never been able to get before: the philosophy majors, the physics TAs, the grad students who carried around dog-eared copies of stories about Russians who lost their noses and women who turned into wallpaper. The ones who -- the minute they figured out he was only at school to play hockey and not to study one-celled organisms or play the cello -- made some kind of noise about not liking violent sports and started paying suspiciously close attention to his mouth, like they were trying to gauge how many teeth he was missing or whether he'd recently chewed off another player's arm. After 5 or 10 more minutes, they usually brushed him off -- using very small words, in case he'd taken a foul to the back of the head recently -- and headed off to find someone who wasn't a stupid jock to fuck.

He'd been back from Lake Placid three weeks and was halfway through something locally brewed and on the house when history first reversed itself. A poly-sci major from Harvard named Janine slipped onto stool next to him. She smiled. He smiled. She licked her lips and ran her finger through the condensation on her glass. He swallowed hard and introduced himself. She told him she already knew who he was and then launched into a discussion of how, for the summer, she was planning on traveling to Poland to study localized forms of government -- and in that instance, even though Debbie Harry was crackling loudly through the speakers all around them, Rizzo could hear the final buzzer ringing through his head. Localized forms of government in _Poland_? He could _maybe_ find Poland on a map if he had, you know, a magnifying glass and someone smart standing there pointing to it. That? That was game over, right there.

So he nodded along for a while while she talked, waiting for the brush off or insult to come -- something that would be his cue to indignantly smack his empty bottle down on the bar, peel OC away from what looked like yet another argument about Rod Gilbert, and go home. OC'd been acting like he wanted to get the hell out of there all night anyway; shooting him these odd glances across the room with his eyes dark and narrowed. The snub never came, though. Instead, she leaned forward and fed him some line about how the team's victory had "unified a nation that was, like, heretofore broken by political deception and misguided international policies". Possibly the worst pick-up line he'd ever heard, outside of Pav's stuttering attempts with a couple of cynical waitresses in Norway, but the way Janine took his hand just then and slid it all the way up her thigh and all the way under her blue-striped skirt to -- uh, _whoa_. Well, that made it a little more persuasive.

That this was a by-product of his new status as the human embodiment of the American dream clicked completely for him about fifteen minutes later; back braced against the cinderblock walls of Janine's dorm room and Janine's legs wrapped tight around his waist.

Over the next couple of weeks, Rizzo decided that all of the academic bullshit Janine had been laying on about the team was...well, yeah, almost definitely bullshit, but _nice_ bullshit, you know? It was also definitely some kind of code for dating Olympians or something. "The way you just brought the country together was breath-taking" *really* meant "my roommate is spending the night in the library studying", just like "it was such a strong statement of international importance" *really* meant "I'm not wearing any underwear".

Actually, that that really wasn't entirely accurate, though. While "the way you just brought the country together was breath-taking" almost always meant "my roommate is spending the night in library studying", the meaning of "it was such a strong statement of international importance" wasn't quite as predictable. Sometimes it simply meant "do me", sometimes it meant "I thought you were Jimmy Craig", and on one sweaty Tuesday night after a strange, massive fight with OC that left him feeling shaky and crude, it meant "I have no idea who you are, but my boyfriend sure as hell does and he has his van parked outside".

So, yeah, easier life now. Rizzo just wasn't sure he wanted it to be.

The thing was this: it'd been hard for him to make the team. Hell, it'd been harder for him to actually stay on the team -- OC, too, between his injury and Rizzo's ability to make the veins on Herb's forehead turn grotesquely large and red. They'd _battled_ for their chance to be on that team. It'd been hard for OC to not throw a puck at McClanahan's head before every game when all OC wanted was 10 minutes of silence and instead all he got was the rhythmic _zzz *rip* zzz *rip*_ of Mack obsessively taping and re-taping his stick. It'd been hard to watch Cox get sent home, though you'd never have known it by how much Rizzo drank afterwords. He'd spent the entire evening leaning sloppily on Silky, downing Pabsts out of sheer relief that it wasn't him who had to go phone his mom and tell them he was coming home, so make room for one more on the couch to watch the game. It'd been hard to beat the Swedes and Russians and the Finns and win that medal -- and that'd been the most glorious, thrilling, fucking _immediate_ moment of his life.

An _easier_ life meant a life with all the challenges, friction, and tension rubbed off it. It meant a life with no fight in it and Rizzo just wasn't sure he could get used to that. He was, however, sure as hell positive that OC wasn't going to get used to it -- and he figured that's why they'd become nearly inseparable since coming home. They balanced each other out, Rizzo thought. He got use some of OC's pent-up energy or, better yet, feel that shock of heat run over his skin when all that pent-up energy turned towards him -- and, in return, he did his best to keep everything calm when the craziness of being one of the nation's newest Golden Boys got to OC. Let him lay around on his apartment floor and try to get him incarcerated.

"Rizzo." Jack had rolled over onto his stomach and was working on dislodging a dusty football that was wedged stiffly between his old, sagging couch and the wall. "Let's steal a car. We'll go cause mass confusion on Comm Ave."

"You're whacked, man."

"Okay, cards. Poker. Monopoly. Parcheesi. Clue. Pong. Seven Minutes in Heaven."

"Jesus, OC, would you just get yourself a damn Rubik's Cube and leave me alone? I'm trying to alphabetize here."

Jack snorted and tossed the football hard at the ceiling. "It's funny how you say that like you _know_ the alphabet."

"I know it well enough to spell some stuff. Like _F - U - C_ \--" Rizzo's vision blurred suddenly as his head snapped forward. "So help me God, you will be sorry if I feel that sneaker near me again!"

 


End file.
